The solar system is a crowded place. Everywhere we look there’s something zipping past: a handful of planets, a million asteroids, a trillion comets, countless bits of fluff and dust. With a big enough telescope and adequate time and patience, there is almost nowhere you can fix your eyes without seeing something.

Almost nowhere.

There is one puzzling region in our solar system that appears to be empty, even though it should easily be able to support thousands of objects in stable orbits. It is not far away; situated inside Mercury’s orbit, it is much closer to Earth than Jupiter ever gets. It is not poorly lit; the nearby sun blazes with fierce intensity. Nor is it a particularly small region, measuring millions of miles across. And yet no resident planet, asteroid, or what-have-you has been seen there.

A few determined astronomers—including Alan Stern, until recently the associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate—believe the emptiness may be an illusion. Objects that formed in that inner zone during the early days of the solar system could still survive there billions of years later. Comets or asteroids shifted by the planets’ gravity could wander into this area, only to find themselves permanently entrapped by the sun’s intense pull. New images of Mercury show it to have been mercilessly pummeled by small objects, implying that the space between it and the sun once was, and potentially still is, occupied by as-yet-unseen bodies. Above all, every single other stable zone in the solar system is occupied. Why should there be one glaring exception?

Astronomy. It is something that I would consider a passion if I had the time to have a passion! There is SO much informatin to learn from history, and infinitely more to discover. What happens when you go into a black hole? What is on the other side? IS there an other side? What about dark matter? Dark energy? Integrated Sachs-Wolfe Effect?

Current Mood: contemplative

Current Music:Otis Redding - Cupid

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So this week I have gone batshit crazy over buying samples of different perfumes, guiltily spending hours reading descriptions and reviews and picking out the ones that smell delicious. Well, that I hope do, anyway. Here's what I've decided! The samples from Lucky Scent

Ambre Topkapi - didn't realize this was a masculine one, but it is my favorite of the bunch. Very sexy, with musk, leather, darjeeling tea and cinnamon. I've had my wrist up to my face for about an hour. After dry-down I am smelling muskk and lavnder and something woody. There are supposed fruity notes but I swear my body absorbs any fruit scents immediately so I do not notice the melon, pineapple, or grapefruit that the description states. Still, I'm on love!

The Unicorn Spell - Verrry interesting. smelling it I can legit see a forest and rainbows and huge flowers and a unicorn. It SMELLS like nature, but not in a floral or dirty way.Very green.

Dammuso - Nope. I smell like an indian kitchen. I LOVE cardamom to eat or in my coffee, bu I do not ejoy smelling like it. Again, my body pH obliterates any fruity notes so I'm not picking up anything but cardamom, and very much missing the citrus and green tea. Dry-down is more woody, but still spicy in a food-spice way. Pass.

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This week I am totally enamored with Stephen Hawking. His new documentary, "Into the Universe, with Stephen Hawking” on Discovery is the first doc I have been able to get into in a long time. So far he has stated that if he were to time travel he would want to meet Marilyn Monroe in her prime, explained how we probably don’t want to meet any extraterrestrials because they’d be too badass to handle, and explained one of my favorite topics, black holes! This man is seriously impressive, and I plan on reading as many of his essays and books as possible. Apparently Stephen and his daughter recently wrote a children’s book called George's Secret Key to the Universe, so that will be on the list for Della!

In honor of this theoretical physicist and cosmologist I am planning a trip to the Painter Hall Telescope at UT to do some deep space observing. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and theories!